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Androgyny As A Feminist Novel Analysis

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However, it is evident from many of the novels published during this period, that such harmonious assimilation, even in fiction was not available to them. Thus, in many novels of this phase, the feminine heroine was seen as growing up in a world without female solidarity, where women in fact police each other on behalf of patriarchal tyranny. Also, the deficiencies of feminine novelists were seen in male portraiture which were attempts to conceal these deficiencies. The model heroes were thus the product of female fantasies about how they would act and feel if they were men. Furthermore, the use of male pseudonyms by women writers is another significant marker of this phase. While novel writing during this time was a route to fortune for …show more content…

The literature by women in this phase, characterized by self discovery, a turning inward, moved beyond feminism to a phase of courageous self-exploration, but also incorporated the double legacy of feminine ‘self-hatred’ and ‘feminist withdrawal’. The women writers of this phase thus moved towards a separatist literature of inner space focusing on the psychological rather than social aspects. Writers like Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf presented their version of modernism as a response to the material culture of male Edwardian novelists like H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett. Androgyny, the sexual ethic of the Bloomsbury group and an important concept of the period provided a refuge from the confrontation with the body. Showalter, in discussing this phase places great significance to Virginia Woolf. In the chapter titled “Virginia Woolf and the flight into Androgyny”, Showalter surveys Woolf's biography and discusses A Room of One’s Own. She sets out to prove that for Woolf the concept of androgyny was a ‘myth that helped her evade confrontation with her own painful femaleness and enabled her to choke and repress her anger and ambition’ (p. 264). She further argues, “In Virginia Woolf’s version of female aestheticism and androgyny, sexual identity is polarized and all the disturbing, dark, and powerful aspects of femaleness are projected onto maleness” (p. 264). Showatter sees Woolf’s insistence on androgynous nature of the great writer as a flight away from a ‘troubled feminism’ (p. 282). Showlater accuses Woolf of impersonality in Room which distracts the attention from the message Woolf wants to convey in the text. For her, these concepts of androgyny and financial independence are neither liberating nor as obvious as they first appear. Since the work does not provide one unifying angle of vision, it fails as a feminist

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This use of logos shows the nonconformity Woolf has with the treatment women receive at the university and the food they are being served, as the plain gravy soup which was a transparent liquid with nothing to stir. This quote transmits the reader a feeling of disadvantage and injustice against women and contributes to the larger idea of women and fiction. Word count:

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459 Words | 2 Pages

As with all theories, this feminist approach to Louise Halfe’s “Body Politics” does not come without its flaws. While it can be argued that this poem criticizes the performativity of feminine gender roles in a patriarchal society, this cannot be proven definitively without knowing the author’s original intentions. Furthermore, the poem does not give its readers enough information to conclude that the society the women live in is in fact a patriarchal society. This becomes evident, as there is no reference to any masculine figure – so any assumptions about the masculine-dominant culture are purely speculative. It is possible that Halfe wrote this poem in an attempt to challenge the gender binary, however one stands to question how successfully she is in doing so.

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642 Words | 3 Pages

After skimming through Volume 1 of The Norton Anthology Literature by Women, I noticed the reoccurring themes of patriarchy, women subordination, and the strength to be creative despite oppression. During the times that these literary pieces were written, women were constantly battling the patriarchy in order to get basic rights. During the earlier time periods, intelligence was seen as a sign of an evil spirit in a woman, resulting in miniscule amounts of literary works written by women. Women were not provided with equal spaces to creatively express themselves, as mentioned by Virginia Woolf. Moreover, they were not given the same publishing opportunities, many women either went anonymous or by a fake male name to have their works published.

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1075 Words | 5 Pages

It may skew her thinking and at times be subjective. The intended audience is someone who is studying literature and interested in how women are portrayed in novels in the 19th century. The organization of the article allows anyone to be capable of reading it.

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608 Words | 3 Pages

In two passages, Virginia Woolf compares meals she was served at a men’s and at a women’s college. The contrasting meals reveal Woolf’s frustration at the inferior treatment that women face. The first meal at the men’s college is elegant, enjoyable, and satisfying while the second is plain, cheap, and bland. This clearly juxtaposes the expense and luxury afforded to the men with the “penny-pinching” nature of the women’s in order to show Woolf’s underlying attitude of dissatisfaction against the inequality that women are not granted the same privileges and investment as men.

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1141 Words | 5 Pages

More recently, the awarded Canadian writer Margaret Atwood has also focused mainly on women’s issues and has been regarded as a feminist writer. In “The Handmaid’s Tale”, published in 1986 Margaret Atwood portrays a strongly feminist view of a dystopian society, in which women have been deprived of all their rights. Both of these writers are representatives of the female feminist writers who have let their footprint in our literary history, and each of them expressed her concerns on women’s rights according to the time they were living in. In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (1929) emphasizes the inequity of treatment for women throughout times that still persists in her society, and promotes her thesis that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (p. 6).

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1001 Words | 5 Pages

The diction and tone in Woolf’s essay affects her message as it was melancholy and calm. The diction was clear and understandable to ensure that the audience could understand her message, rather than try and decipher large incoherent words. Woolf also uses many words with negative connotations, but takes a neutral attitude to the subject. At the beginning of the essay Woolf 's tone is very hopeful, but as the essay progresses it turns dark and somber. At the beginning Woolf used phrasing such as “ Pleasant morning” (Woolf 5) and “enormous energy of the world”(Woolf 24) .

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1221 Words | 5 Pages

By using casual diction, simple sentences, and well-known allusions, Woolf is able to shift the audience’s attention from the gender of the

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1071 Words | 5 Pages

Woolf makes a point to disengage with her environment. She mandates that she not allow herself to become too absorbed with any one person or their story. Instead she ought to treat each moment as a if it were fleeting, saying “Let us dally a little longer, be content still with surfaces only” (2) This is instruction is literal, Woolf believes that engaging with her setting will remove the joy from vapid displays of beauty. She even compares such an experience to a sugary diet, lacking in nutrition but desirable nevertheless (2).

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1155 Words | 5 Pages

By creating a visual image of a woman sacrificing herself, the audience can understand how Woolf senses an obstacle of not being able to complete her writing without getting restricted by gender roles. The “Angel in the House” talks to Woolf while Woolf is writing, “My dear, you are a young woman... Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex…”. The Angel in the House’s words affirms that women should mainly focus on being appealing towards men, alerting the audience’s sense of hearing. Furthermore, this auditory imagery uses sounds that invokes the sense of being forced to align with another perspective (The Angel in the House), which pulls the audience’s heartstrings forcefully in the oppression by society.

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991 Words | 4 Pages

The essay, A Room of One’s Own makes a claim that the identity of a woman is what holds her back in society, even though according to Woolf, a woman has the ability to write more intelligently, as “women have come to have the habit of writing naturally”. The issue, Woolf argues, is that most women throughout history are not awarded the tools in which is necessary to write well, because women were not expected to do anything but serve the family, let alone write. Woolf argues that in order for a woman to overcome this identity of lesser-than, she must have at least 500 pounds a year and

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826 Words | 4 Pages

This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a

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906 Words | 4 Pages

The people in Woolf’s book seem to be looking through each other with some far question; and, although they interact vividly, they are not completely real to know people in outline are one way of knowing them. Moreover, they are seen here in the way they are meant to be seen. However, the result is that you know quite well the kind of

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1248 Words | 5 Pages

One of the most significant works of feminist literary criticism, Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One`s Own”, explores both historical and contemporary literature written by women. Spending a day in the British Library, the narrator is disappointed that there are not enough books written by or even about women. Motivated by this lack of women’s literature and data about their lives, she decides to use her imagination and come up with her own characters and stories. After creating a tragic, but extraordinary gifted figure of Shakespeare’s sister and reflecting on the works of crucial 19th century women authors, the narrator moves on to the books by her contemporaries. So far, women were deprived of their own literary history, but now this heritage is starting to appear.

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1140 Words | 5 Pages

This can be exhibited when she states “..that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty.” Woolf desires to validate the idea that “woman cannot write the plays of Shakespeare” but intends to clarify that this is not due to a lack of talent or ability equal to that of men, but simply because the societal structures at the time rendered it impossible for them to be equally successful. In the development of her argument, Woolf starts out by exposing the belief that it was impossible for women to “have the genius of Shakespeare” and she contextualises the reader with some basic information, given by an authority figure “Professor Trevelyan” about women’s conditions during the era. Woolf then provides the reader with a hypothetical situation to ponder on: What if Shakespeare had had a sister — that is, a female sibling of

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